Something to Talk About
by Suilven
Summary: He wished they could talk about this. They were bad at talking, had been actively bad at it for years now. His fault as much as hers. But they'd never had something so big to not talk about.


He wished they could talk about this.

They were bad at talking, had been actively bad at it for years now. His fault as much as hers.

But they'd never had something so _big_ to not talk about and it was gnawing away at him with each day that passed. It felt like one of those giant jawbreakers he'd begged for at the candy store when he was a kid; too huge to even fit in your mouth. No one he knew had ever finished one. Every day now was a new colour, a new layer, but that damn jawbreaker would still shatter your mandible if you tried to bite down on it, to crack it into pieces to reach the elusive center.

It had happened again this morning.

He hadn't meant for it to happen — if anything, he'd been going out of his way to _keep_ it from happening — not again, not like this.

All it had taken was a look that lasted a fraction of a second too long, those fathomless blue eyes that left him shipwrecked, and then her mouth had found his and he had been lost.

Sprawled across the altar of his desk — _their_ desk — he had worshipped her as best he could with his fingers, his tongue, his teeth. Everything but words. He had driven himself into her relentlessly, lapping up her every moan and whimper, holding himself back to the point of pain until he had felt her clench around him as she'd shattered. Only then could he let himself go, chanting her name, just her name, against the sanctity of her breasts, afraid of what else he might say. _Scully. Scully. Scully. _He'd come so hard he'd nearly passed out, his lanky form draped over hers as they'd tried to catch their breath. He'd been too afraid to look at her. Just like the other times.

No, he'd simply straightened and stood there, a useless scarecrow with downcast button eyes. Offered her a hand up as she'd wiggled off the desk to tug down her skirt and rebutton her blouse. Fixed his own clothes as she'd vanished off to the bathroom. By the time she returned, he'd retrieved the papers and folders and pencils from the floor and everything was just as it had been.

Nothing to talk about.

For the last half hour, he'd been watching Scully delicately sucking on the end of her pen as she flipped through the report in front of her. If she'd noticed that he was staring, she was ignoring him.

He cracked a sunflower seed between his back teeth, adding to the pile of shells in the Styrofoam coffee cup in the open drawer to his right. What colour layer would they be today?

Another seed. Another rustle of a page turned over. Another tap of the pen cap against her front teeth.

Red. Definitely red. He was itching for a fight, restless, as though there were ants crawling under his skin. Although, he wasn't sure that arguing with her was what he actually wanted.

He loosened the knot in his tie. It was too hot in here. How could she sit there, radiating a cool sense of calm, when he felt like there was a pot boiling over inside of him, steam billowing up in waves to fog up the backs of his eyes?

She took off her glasses and set them down, still focused on the report. "So, I've been looking over the autopsy results for the last two victims and I found something I think the county coroner might have missed. I'd like to go back down there and take a look before they release the bodies to their families. Are you okay interviewing the other witness," she flipped back a page to check her notes, "Ronald Harrison, without me if I head over there this afternoon?"

He didn't say anything. She wouldn't even look at him. He knew he was being petty, but he couldn't bring himself to be agreeable; he simply sat there in silence, waiting for her to notice him.

"Mulder? Did you hear what I said?"

"Can I take you out for dinner tonight, Scully?" The words dropped unintentionally from his mouth like ball bearings hitting the surface of the desk and ricocheting wildly. He'd fully intended to toss a barbed retort in her direction, and the question took him by surprise as much as it did her.

Her eyes shot up to meet his. "What?"

He extracted the latest shell and dropped it into the cup with the others, fingers trembling. His subconscious had made the first move and now he had to follow through. All in or nothing. "Dinner. You. Me. Tonight."

"Why?" She closed the file folder but didn't put it down, gripping the edges tightly between her fingers.

"It doesn't have to be dinner. We could do anything you want. Get a drink, see a movie."

Scully's forehead crinkled. "Mulder, are you asking me on a date?"

He responded with a slow blink, keeping his gaze fixed on hers. "Yes."

"I… I don't think that's a good idea." She stood up quickly, pushing her chair back with a pained squeak as the metal feet scraped across the floor.

He was on his feet in an instant, the coiled spring inside him snapping. "Why not?"

"You already know why." She pursed her lips in like she did when she was angry, but her eyes flashed with something melancholy. "There are rules."

"Which we've already broken."

She folded her arms across her chest, meeting his gaze squarely. "It was a mistake."

He slammed his hand down on the desk, making her flinch. "A mistake? No, something that happens over and over is no longer a mistake. It's a pattern of behaviour."

"One that has to stop. Will stop." She grabbed her jacket off the back of her chair and flung it over one arm.

"Scully, wait, we need to—"

"I'm going over to the morgue. I should be back here by three if you want to compare notes after you talk to Mr. Harrison." Her words were clipped, thrown back at him over her shoulder as she walked away.

The door slammed shut behind her.

"Dammit!" Mulder slammed his hand against the desk, harder this time, and then collapsed back into his chair. Why did everything always have to be so difficult?

* * *

Scully had been sitting in her car for twenty minutes and she hadn't even turned it on. Technically, she _couldn't_.

She had dumped the case file and her jacket haphazardly onto the passenger seat, but her purse — with her car keys — was still tucked in the corner of her workbench in the office.

But she couldn't go back down there right now, not after that.

What choice did she have? Her wallet was in there, too, or she could have taken a cab. It was a moot point now.

Damn him. He could never leave the proverbial sleeping dog alone, he _always_ had to push the limits until something broke. Usually her. She banged her hand against the steering wheel, just hard enough to sting, and let her head fall back against the headrest.

The worst part was that he was right.

They needed to talk about this, as much as she didn't want to tackle it head on, but she had no idea what to say, how to even unwind the tangled skein of her emotions in a way that would allow them to move forward. In some ways, it was easier to dance around it, to let it reside in the nebulous nowhere land of things that were best left unsaid and unexamined. But then it stayed uncontrolled, a storm cast sky ready to break open at any moment. She couldn't wrestle with it like this, pin it down into something she could impose her rational will upon. She liked control, needed it, and now she felt reckless, rudderless.

She'd never meant for this to happen, regardless of how much she'd thought about it. Wanted it. Wanted him. But there had been a kind of inevitability about it, too, like a numeric series converging to its mathematically determined limit.

A late night at his place. The giddy thrill of solving a challenging case. A girl's life saved. She'd let her guard down as they'd watched a ridiculously cheesy old horror movie. He'd slung a friendly arm across her shoulder and she'd laughed and leaned against him and then, somehow, she was kissing him and he was kissing her back and it was everything she'd ever wanted.

She hadn't been able to stop. Hadn't wanted to stop. So, she'd urged him on instead, climbing into his lap to straddle his hips, grinding herself against him until no coherent thought remained for either of them. Surrender had never been so sweet.

It wasn't until they had finished, Mulder panting and naked beneath her on the couch, that she felt a prickle of apprehension at what they had done.

No going back now.

She'd rushed off to the bathroom and cleaned herself up, spending too long staring at her freshly fucked reflection in his bathroom mirror before pulling herself together. It wasn't a big deal. It didn't have to mean anything or be more than it was… just two colleagues who had been physically attracted to each other for years letting off some steam.

She breezed out of the bathroom as if they did this every day, thanked him for the movie, and left.

Monday at work, Mulder didn't bring it up and neither did she.

Perfect.

But she discovered she had a newfound appreciation for his hands, for the smell of the soap he used; always strongest when he walked into the office in the morning although she could still pick up the hint of it if she leaned in close to him at the end of the day. The first time he rested his palm against her lower back after that night at his apartment she thought her knees might give out.

Through sheer force of will, she made it through Monday. Tuesday had been easier, as they'd scarcely crossed paths with her spending most of the day in the lab, but then Wednesday they'd ended up kissing breathlessly against the filing cabinet and she knew she'd lost the battle, if not the war, a long time ago.

And then this morning… Even with her eyes closed, she could still see him moving over top of her, his biceps straining in his locked arms as he'd held himself up, the slow rock of his pelvis against hers.

Shit.

As much as she didn't want to face this, there wasn't any other choice.

She took a deep breath and reached for the door handle.

* * *

The sound of her footsteps in the hallway outside made him raise his head from where he'd been resting it against his folded arms on top of the desk. He picked up the first folder from the pile in the corner of his desk and flipped it open, staring down at it with feigned intensity as the office door opened.

"Hey." Her voice was quiet, sad, but he didn't look up. "Forgot my keys."

He made a hum of what he hoped she would take as sufficient acknowledgement of her presence. Hopefully she would take the hint that he just wanted to be left alone. He listened to the click of her heels as she made her way over to the workbench. He found himself holding his breath, his lungs squeezing inward, as if all the air had suddenly been sucked from the room.

He waited for her to leave again, but there was nothing but silence.

Venturing a look in her direction, he was surprised to see her watching him. He slowly lowered the folder and closed it.

She opened her mouth, her tongue briefly touching the lower corner of her lip before she finally spoke. "You're right." She drew in a slow breath and let it out. "It wasn't a mistake. And we need to talk about it. Whatever this is between us isn't going to just go away."

He was afraid to ask, but he had to know. "Do you want it to go away?"

A hint of a smile crept into the corners of her mouth and, for the first time, he felt the stirrings of hope. "No. No, I don't."

He blew out a breath, feeling the tension inside him loosen. "So what now?"

"Well, at this exact moment, we both have a job to do. I need to get over the morgue before those bodies are released. But, maybe dinner later… would be okay."

"Okay." Mulder nodded, almost afraid to move too quickly in case she suddenly bolted. "What time should I pick you up? Six? Six thirty?"

She was clutching her purse against her chest like a shield. "Let's say six thirty."

"Okay." He couldn't resist adding, "It's a date."

Her right eyebrow twitched but didn't arch up fully as she shook her head slightly. "I'll see you later, Mulder."

* * *

She took far too long deciding what to wear. "It's only Mulder," she kept muttering to herself, but that didn't seem to stop her from trying on five different shirts before settling on the sixth, or from touching up her makeup. She also refused to linger on the fact that she had dug around in the back of her underwear drawer for the black lace bra and panty set that still had the tags on them, purchased just before she had broken up with Ethan and never worn.

By six fifteen, she was a mess of nerves, and she forced herself to sit on the couch — and stay sitting — as the relentless pacing wasn't helping at all.

Thankfully, there was a hesitant triplet of knocks on her front door and she sprang up to open it.

"Hi." She smiled and tucked a lock of hair back behind her ear as she opened the door wider. "You're early."

"Yeah. Sitting around at home was making me crazy. And then, I was downstairs sitting in my car, and that was even worse, so I figured I would just come up." He smiled sheepishly. Mulder's hair was damp and she got a strong whiff of cologne and soap as he stepped forward —he'd evidently showered when he got home — and he was wearing her favourite of his sweaters, a dark charcoal grey one that accentuated his lean physique.

From behind him, he produced a small bouquet of daisies, holding them out towards her with an awkwardness she found inexplicably endearing. "Um. Here. These are for you."

She took them from him, touching the petals of one of the blooms gently before looking up at him. "You didn't have to get me flowers, Mulder."

"I know." He tucked his hands in his pockets and shrugged. "But I wanted to."

"Well… thank you. Let me get these in some water and then we can go." She went into the kitchen and pulled down a crystal vase from one of her cupboards and began filling it with water from the tap. "Speaking of which," she called towards the front hall, "you haven't told me where we're going."

When she turned around, Mulder was leaning against the door frame, and it was all she could do to not tackle him to the floor and kiss the life out of him. How had she held out for so long, not knowing how his lips felt against hers? She gripped the vase tighter, afraid it might suddenly slip through her fingers.

"I thought we'd try that new Italian place on 5th. The one you've been wanting to try since it opened."

Regaining her composure slightly, she managed to put the vase down on the table without spilling and set about peeling the cellophane wrapping off from around the stems. After a moment, she paused, her fingers stilling as she looked over at him. "How did you know I wanted to go there?"

He chuckled. "You always turn to stare at it when we drive by."

"I do not!" She finished tearing through the thin plastic wrapping and settled the flowers in the water, adjusting a few to give them all some space. They really were pretty. "Fine. Maybe a little."

Turning back towards him, she smiled. "There. What do you think?"

He took a few steps forward until he was standing directly in front of her, so close that she could feel his body heat. "I think," he murmured softly, his eyes locked on hers, "that they're beautiful." He reached past her, drawing out one daisy from the vase and twisting off most of the stem before tucking the bloom into the hair behind her ear.

She felt herself blushing under his scrutiny and she raised her hand to his chest and pushed him back gently. "Let's go eat. I'm hungry."

* * *

"This is weird." Scully idly twirled a few strands of linguine around her fork and looked up at him through her eyelashes.

"What is?" He forced himself to stop staring at her mouth and glanced down at his own plate. Despite feeling too anxious to eat, he'd nearly finished his plate of food already. Eating seemed safer than talking. Scully was mostly through her second glass of wine, so clearly he wasn't the only one at least.

"This." She popped the neatly wrapped bite into her mouth and chewed. "Us. Doing things like normal people."

He hesitated before looking back at her. "Weird good or weird bad?"

"Good, I think. Just… different." Setting her fork down, she took a generous sip of her merlot while he tried to not clench the napkin draped across his lap. "I mean, it's not like we haven't had dinner together, probably hundreds of times over the years. But tonight, I feel a bit like I did the first time I opened your office door."

"Horrified?"

Scully huffed out a soft laugh. "No." With one finger, she traced the lip of her wine glass, staring down at it until she'd made a full revolution before meeting his eyes again. "A little nervous. Not sure what to expect. But excited at the prospect of trying something new."

He couldn't help himself and reached across the side of the table to take her hand in his, giving her fingers a gentle squeeze. "I'm nervous, too. This," he slid his thumb over the back of her hand in a sweeping caress, "means a lot to me. _You_ mean a lot to me. This isn't something I can take lightly." He anchored his gaze on her eyes and let the rest of the restaurant fade into his periphery. "I'm happy to follow your lead, to go as fast or as slow as you want, but I'm done with pretending that walking away is even an option. It isn't for me, and I don't think it is for you either."

It was like they had been dropped into a photograph where everything except for the two of them was now motionless. Frozen. Waiting.

She exhaled slowly, her eyes glittering with a fierceness that was both familiar and exhilarating. He'd seen that look many times — Scully had finished her examination of the evidence in front of her and had come to a decision that, he hoped, included him in it.

"I'm done pretending, too. I'm not walking away. I thought I had accepted how things were, but that was before I knew exactly what it was I was giving up." Scully worried her lower lip between her teeth before continuing. "I know that there could be repercussions, giving in to this, letting this happen… but, despite all those rational reasons why we shouldn't, I can't bring myself to stop it." Her voice had grown quieter and quieter; her last words scarcely a whisper. "I don't want to stop it."

Desire was beginning to coil, thick and hot in his belly. "Neither do I."

The hint of a coy smile played around the corners of her lips. "Well, then it appears that we're agreed. Those moments are few and far between."

He tried to keep it cool, but she was sure she could feel his barely contained relief and giddy excitement in the bounce of his knee beneath the table. "We should make the most of it then."

"True. Who knows when it's going to happen again?"

He stood up, not letting go of her hand. "Well, then, if you've had enough to eat, I think our next destination awaits."

She gave him a puzzled look but rose as well after folding her napkin and tucking it neatly beside her plate. "I'm intrigued. I thought this was just dinner."

"It could have been… depending on how things went." Pulling his wallet from his pocket, he slipped out a handful of bills, leaving a more than generous tip for their waiter. "I wanted to surprise you."

"Mulder, if it's one thing you're exceptionally good at, it's being unpredictable." With that, she stretched up on her toes to brush her lips against his cheek. "I'm ready if you are."

He couldn't help the smile that broke across his face. He was the luckiest man in the world.

* * *

"I have to admit, I wasn't expecting this." Scully grinned over at him, wiping the itchy tip of her nose with the back of her hand and trying to avoid getting another smear of clay on her face. "I would never have guessed that you would go for a pottery class." She blew a loose strand of hair out of her eyes. She'd tied it back, but it was too short to stay put for long.

"C'mon, Scully, you've seen Ghost. It doesn't get any more romantic than that." The tip of Mulder's tongue was sticking out as he focused on smoothing the clay rings he had formed into something approximately bowl shaped.

She stifled a laugh at the intensity of his concentrated efforts as she ran her fingers over the lopsided surface of her own bowl. "I don't think this is quite the same."

They were sitting side by side at one of several long tables in the back room of a pottery studio near her apartment that she hadn't even known existed. They were the only couple and, Scully was quite sure, the only ones there who wouldn't qualify for the senior citizen discount. She leaned in so she could speak quietly in his ear. "Aren't you supposed to be standing sensuously behind me while we mould wet clay and imagine it's each other's naked flesh?"

He turned to face her with a quirk of his eyebrows, but his pupils were wide and dark and she hadn't missed the surprised hitch of his breath. "Why, Miss Scully, that sounds positively indecent. You aren't planning to offend my delicate sensibilities and corrupt my virtue, are you?"

"Well, that depends." She glanced around and, when she was sure no one was paying them any attention, licked the top curve of his ear and smiled as a shudder ran through him.

His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. "On what?"

"On where we're going after this."

"Your place or mine?" he murmured.

She pressed a kiss to the soft skin behind his ear. "Mine. It's closer, and I don't know how much longer I can wait."

Mulder blew out a shaky breath. "Ditto."

* * *

They held hands across the center console as they drove back to her place, and he hoped his palms weren't sweaty. This was the first time that they were proceeding with premeditated intent, and he felt more than a little eager and jumpy at the same time. He glanced over at Scully, the slightly wilted daisy from earlier still tucked behind her ear.

"Mulder, stop staring at me."

"I can't help it. Now that I'm allowed, I'm planning to take full advantage of that liberty. Among others." He let go of her hand and moved his own to rest on the top of her thigh, tracing light circles with the tip of his finger. "You're incredible. I want to spend the rest of tonight showing you just how much."

"Mulder…" She rolled her eyes at him and turned to face the window, but not before he caught the pink blush that flooded her cheeks.

A few blocks later, he pulled the car into an empty parking spot and switched off the engine. Her eyes met his as he took the keys from the ignition. His mouth felt dry and he was afraid to move, feeling like it might break the spell they both seemed to be under. "Ready?"

Her voice was raspy and low, silk and chocolate. "I'm ready."

* * *

He'd always thought of her bedroom with an almost holy sort of reverence, Scully's inner sanctum that he'd only had the privilege of experiencing a handful of times and never like this.

Never like tonight.

"Make love to me," she'd whispered, drawing him by the hand through the darkened hallway and into a dream.

With each piece of clothing removed, there were caresses and touches, whimpers and sighs, as they mapped the landscapes of each other's bodies.

The swirl of his tongue around the perfect peaks of her nipples. The perfumed hollow nestled between the slopes of her collar bones. The porcelain concave of her waist that flared out into the soft convex roundness of her hips.

Scully hummed in contentment as she brushed her cheek against the coarse hair of Mulder's chest, leaving a cooling trail across his abdominal muscles as she tasted the salt of his skin. It was a battle of wills between body and mind, the urge to speed up, for more, fighting against the desire to savour the exquisite sweetness of this moment in time where everything, for once, was as it should be.

_Make love to me._ The words reverberated within his chest, his heart ringing with them like a bell in a half-forgotten church tower.

The scrape of her teeth over the tendons at the base of his neck. The sheen of sweat from the effort of holding back.

The world around them was perfectly silent, and they filled the emptiness with the creak of springs, the rustle of sheets; with the harsh broken moans of desire. She clutched at his shoulders, wanting him close, closer, with a sob of muffled pleasure as he finally slid inside her.

This time, he let it all spill out as her breath came quick and fast against his ear. "You feel so good. Wanted you, wanted you for so long." His strokes were long and deep and she wrapped her legs around him to keep him right where she wanted him, heels digging in to hold him in place. "Just you. Only you."

"Mulder…" His name was a drawn out sigh that became a moan as he wriggled his hand between them to rub the pad of his thumb against her in increasingly frenzied circles.

"Scully. Oh, Scully…" He groaned, pressing wet kisses down the column of her neck. It had never been like this. Never.

_Make love to me._

They were making love.

The words were falling from his lips to splash like teardrops against her skin, and he'd never felt so free, so unafraid. "I love you. God, I love you so much." The heady smell of her arousal was making him wild, he couldn't get enough of her — slick and wet and everywhere. Everything and not enough.

Her head was lolled back, twisting from side to side as her fingernails imprinted perfect crescents into the back of his neck. "I'm close… don't stop. Please, don't stop."

She cried out with pleasure as he rubbed his stubbled cheek across the sensitive underside of her jaw.

"I won't stop. Want you to come for me. You're so beautiful. Want to see you."

"Mulder!" She was trembling now, squeezing his hips with her legs to keep him deep inside her as his hips rocked the tip of him against her cervix.

Lifting her head, she kissed him hard as she tensed beneath him and he felt her walls ripple around him as her mouth went slack in a groan.

"Oh God, Scully, God…" His own orgasm crested over him with a sudden shock of pleasure so strong that he gasped, feeling the need to thrust helplessly against her as hard as he could for a few final strokes.

He collapsed weakly on top of her, trying to keep his full weight from crushing her into the mattress.

When he could move again, he rolled off her to the side, pulling her with him into the circle of his arms. He pressed a kiss to the damp skin of her forehead before she nuzzled her face into his chest with a contented sigh. They lay there quietly for few minutes, neither of them wanting to move.

"Did you mean it?"

He could hear the slight tentativeness in her question. His cheek was resting against the crown of her head and he smiled. "I meant it."

"Good." He felt her answering smile against his chest. "Say it again."

She lifted her head to look up at him and he bent his head down to brush his lips against hers, kissing her slowly and tenderly. "I love you, Scully."

"I love you, too."

And she kissed him back.

* * *

_A gift for FragileVixen for the Valentine's Day X-Files fic exchange organized by the amazing OnlyTheInevitable. _

_As always, a shout out and thank you to my wonderful beta, Josie Lange, for whacking this around with her beta stick!_


End file.
